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Last year 85% of the phones sold globally were Smartphones – and, of course, that percent will go up this year. As a matter of fact, it won’t be long, and we won’t have dumb phones.

What is the difference between Smartphones and dumb phones? The answer is the web browser. If you have access to the Internet, your phone is now smart. A quick way to tell if you have a Smartphone or a dumb phone.

Smartphones give you access to the Internet, which of course then gives you access to apps. They have email, access to the cloud, and many other capabilities, including the ability to watch TV, & listen to radio.

That phone, then, is transformed into a multifunction utility, almost like a mobile living room, giving you more than what you would normally do on your computer.

This hard trend that will continue and as that happens, we have GPS as part of all phones, and we have people leaving their systems on and giving permission for apps to use location-based tracking, so that they can serve you in a better way. Privacy will be stretched once again.

I think what we’re doing is really just seeing something that’s been a long trend, and it’s harder and harder to manage our own privacy with the wide-scale acceptance of social media.

It is increasingly difficult to manage your privacy. At some point, the only way you’re going to manage your privacy is to unplug. And yet, you won’t be able to unplug because everything else, everything that you do and need will be plugged in.

Let’s face it, if we knew exactly what was happening with the movement of all people and their phones, just from being in cars, we’d be able to tell where congestions are taking place. You would be able to get better routing ahead of time so that traffic could move better. You could get routes that would give you better gas mileage. There could be a lot of positive aspects to being monitored where you are at any given time. But, once again, the downside is privacy issues.

ABOUT DANIEL BURRUS

Daniel Burrus is considered one of the World’s Leading Futurists on Global Trends and Innovation. The New York Times has referred to him as one of the top three business gurus in the highest demand as a speaker.